Mormon Sect Supports Paul Bunyan Story

By Elroy Willis -- April 1, 2003

SALT LAKE CITY (EAP)
-- "Paul Bunyan and His blue ox Babe formed the Grand Canyon," is the latest message from a new splinter group of the Mormon church which has made the news this past week.

"After years and years of no proof of an actual world-wide flood and plenty of evidence against the idea, we had to make a compromise," says Tom Gibbons, leader of the new group which has yet to decide on a name for itself.

"We could no longer pretend that there was really a world-wide flood which killed all but eight people and be honest with ourselves at the same time, so we didn't quite know what to do," Gibbons said.

"Our new group is composed entirely of anti-deluvians, and we all believe that God is way too loving and merciful to ever kill so many innocent people and babies and animals with an actual world-wide flood, so we decided to start a new group which supports the Paul Bunyan story instead."

"There are several lumberjacks in Mormon history, and even Jesus Himself was a carpenter who required lumberjacks to bring him the wood that He made things out of."

"The legends of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe are quite well-known and passed on to our children by many of the people in our neck of the woods, and even by some people up in Canada. Also, the stories about Paul and Babe aren't nearly as gruesome as the stories about God intentionally drowning people with a world-wide flood on purpose," Gibbons said.

Claiming that Paul and Babe actually created the Grand Canyon is blasphemy or "just plain stupid," say the majority of Utah Mormons who waffle between the Noah flood story and the Colorado River theory as explanations for how the Grand Canyon was actually formed.

"We take offense to that claim, and believe that Paul and Babe formed the Great Lakes as well as the Mississippi river."

"Despite our differences, we can all still agree that Joseph Smith actually received some golden tablets from an Angel named Moroni, and that the plates mysteriously vanished one day, and that's a good thing," both groups said.

"It's no more unbelievable to us than the stories about Moses receiving some hand-written tablets from God and Him smashing them, and them then mysteriously disappearing from history one day, along with the golden Ark of the Covenant that the Jewish people were said to carry the Ten Commandments around in," Gibbons said.

"We cannot agree, however, that the Grand Canyon was formed over millions and millions of years, as the Colorado river slowly eroded away at its banks, because that would completely destroy the family lines of all the important people in the Bible. It would go against the heart and soul of Christianity," he said.